This program of research is designed to clarify the prominent roles played by vicarious, self-referent, and self-regulatory processes in psychological functioning. One line of research is aimed at elucidating the three main constituent processes in a self-regulatory system: monitoring of one's own behavior; judgment of performance against referential standards; and conditional self-reaction. Another main line of research concerns the role of self-referent thought in the regulation of behavior. The theory being tested is that different modes of influence alter coping and achievement behavior by creating and strengthening expectations of personal effectiveness. Efficacy expectations determine whether coping behavior will be initiated, how much effort will be expended, and how long it will be sustained in the face of obstacles. In the proposed model, expectations of personal efficacy are derived from four principal sources of information -performance accomplishments; vicarious experiences of observing others succeed through their coping efforts; verbal persuasion and allied types of social influences; and states of physiological arousal from which people partly judge their vulnerability to stress.